Fusion Studio 21.1: hardware deep render up to eight times faster and more than 25 new Krokodove tools

Blackmagic Design has released Fusion Studio 21.1 — the update is free for existing license holders. The Krokodove set has gained more than 25 new tools for building shapes and working in 3D, hardware rendering of deep images is, according to the developer, up to eight times faster, and lens distortion can now be calibrated from lines the user draws directly in the viewer.

A version of the Fusion toolset is also included in DaVinci Resolve — as a separate page inside the application, so the compositing changes affect users of both products.

Krokodove has gone from a third-party add-on to a built-in node set

Krokodove is a collection of motion design tools that used to be distributed as a free third-party add-on: over 70 nodes, from standard image filters to warping and morphing, plus titles and text animation. In version 21.0 Blackmagic included it in the product.

In 21.1 the set has been expanded by more than 25 tools — mainly for building shapes and working with 3D. For a motion designer the point of the integration is practical: a set that previously required installing a third-party package and keeping an eye on its compatibility with each new version of the software is now updated together with the application and is equally available in Fusion Studio and on the Fusion page in Resolve.

The template building tools have been improved as well. MultiText has received improved layer alignment behavior, and the font browser now has an option to show the preview using the text from the title itself. Macro Editor can now load and save DRFX with several templates, has received improved group selection, grouping and node organization, and the macro update command now adds tools from the selection in the node graph to the macro. OGraf assets support time-based animation actions, and controls for frame, ease and scale have been added to OgrafLoader.

Deep compositing: rendering up to eight times faster

Deep compositing makes it possible to calculate object intersections from per-pixel depth data, without manual holdout mattes. A set of such tools appeared in Fusion Studio 20.0, and in 21.0 native color correction of deep images and full layer support were added to it.

In 21.1 Blackmagic claims that hardware rendering of deep images is up to eight times faster. Renderer3D in deep mode has gained motion blur and support for matte objects, flipbook preview now works for deep tools, and hard mix has been added to the tools with blend modes. The release also claims improved video monitoring performance on the desktop and general performance and stability improvements.

Distortion calibration from lines drawn in the frame

The Lens Distort tool can now calculate distortion from lines the user draws in the viewer. In version 21.0 the tool received calibration from a checkerboard chart — an approach that requires the shooting crew to have filmed the corresponding shot. The new mode makes it possible to work with material that arrives in post-production without any special preparation.

Camera Tracker in 21.1 can import tracking results calculated in external software, trim tracks, and also view the reference frame and jump to it. For studios this means that a solution from a specialized tracker can be brought into a Fusion scene without recalculation.

Python 2 support discontinued

The technical part of the release is shorter, but for pipeline supervisors it is significant: Fusion Studio 21.1 no longer supports Python 2. Studio scripts and internal tools still running on it will have to be ported to Python 3. The rest of the changes extend compatibility:

• support for OCIO 2.5, including the ACES 2.0 workflow;
• OpenPBR materials;
• reading and writing EXR with HTJ2K compression in Loader and Saver;
• DJI D-Gamut2 and D-Log2, GoPro Log, Leica L-Log (IDT and LUT), Vivo Wide Gamut and Vivo Log color spaces;
• an option to bypass distortion and vignetting correction for DNG sources;
• extended variable syntax in expressions and substitutions;
• alpha handling (pre-divide and post-multiply) in the logarithmic conversion tools.

The update is available free of charge for existing customers on the Blackmagic Design support site. A Fusion Studio license costs $295 and is activated with a DaVinci Resolve license; a version of the Fusion toolset is included in DaVinci Resolve. System requirements: macOS 15 Sequoia or later on a computer with Apple Silicon, Windows 10 Creators Update, Windows 11 for ARM on Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors or Rocky Linux 8.6; 16 GB of RAM (32 GB for higher performance), and for Windows and Linux a graphics card with at least 4 GB of VRAM supporting OpenCL 1.2 or CUDA 12.8.

Why Blackmagic takes into the product what the community made

The Krokodove story fits a long-standing line of the company. Fusion came to Blackmagic with the purchase of eyeon Software, and since then the price of the commercial edition has steadily fallen — today it is $295. The software works more as an argument in favor of the company's ecosystem and hardware than as a standalone source of revenue. Against the backdrop of competing compositing packages moving to subscription models, the difference in the cost of entry for a small studio or a freelancer remains a noticeable argument when choosing a tool.

The Krokodove integration is the same logic applied to functionality. Instead of spending years catching up with competitors in the number of generators and effects, the company took a mature set, proven by the community in real projects, and now develops it with its in-house team. This closes an area where Fusion historically looked weaker — motion design.

If the trend continues, other popular third-party sets for Fusion will probably move inside the product as well. For users this is convenient: fewer dependencies and version conflicts. For the authors of free extensions the picture is twofold — their work gains official status and an audience, but the ecosystem of independent add-ons around the application shrinks in the process. The second line of the release, the acceleration of deep rendering, points to a different goal: to make techniques that were considered the privilege of large VFX studios feasible on an ordinary workstation.